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ABAC First Tuesday Concert Features ‘A Night of Strings’ November 4

October 21, 2014

The First Tuesday Concert Series will feature “A Night of Strings” on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Chapel of All Faiths at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. This concert is open to the public at no charge.

The First Tuesday series, now in its 13th year, features regional professional artists on the first Tuesdays of five months during the year. Dr. Susan Roe, Director of Music for the School of Liberal Arts, is the First Tuesday Program Director.

“A Night of Strings” spotlights Dr. Douglas Jurs, ABAC assistant professor of piano and music theory, and Dr. Lauren Burns Hodges, a violist who is a member of the Valdosta State University (VSU) music faculty. Selections will include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s E-flat major piano quartet. Cellist Steven Taylor and violinist Kristen Pfeifer Yu, other members of the VSU music faculty, will join Jurs and Hodges for this piece. Jurs and Hodges will also perform Ernest Bloch’s “Suite for Viola and Piano.”

Jurs joined the ABAC faculty in 2012, having previously served on the piano faculties at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Edgewood College. He won First Prize at the 2004 Lee Biennial Piano Competition, and was winner of the University of Wisconsin Beethoven Competition in 2010. Jurs is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Blue Horse Music Festival in Woodstock, Vt., a biannual winter/summer concert series that features acclaimed musicians performing in the intimate Blue Horse Inn music parlor. With over 10 years of private piano teaching experience, Jurs was one of the first teachers to work with the University of Wisconsin Piano Pioneers program, an initiative that brings affordable music lessons to low-income students.

Jurs received his bachelor’s degree in piano performance and English literature from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2000; his master’s degree in piano performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2003; and his doctorate of music in piano performance with a minor in music theory from the University of Wisconsin in 2010.

Hodges currently serves as a VSU lecturer in viola, principal viola of the Valdosta Symphony, violist of the Azalea String Quartet, and Director of the South Georgia String Project. She was a founding member of the Hausmann Quartet, which was chosen in 2007 as a showcasing ensemble at the Chamber Music America National Conference in Times Square. As a member of the quartet, Hodges completed two years as a young artist-in-residence on the Lyrica Boston Chamber Music Series and two years at Kent State University in Ohio as a teaching assistant to the Miami String Quartet. She was a fellow at Norfolk and Kent/Blossom summer music festivals, coaching with Claude Frank and members of the Keller, Tokyo, and Vermeer quartets.

Winner of the Narramore Fellowship, Hodges received her doctoral degree from the University of Alabama upon completion of her document entitled “Coordinated Action in String Playing: A Comparative Study of the Teachings of Paul Rolland and Karen Tuttle.” She earned a master’s degree at Peabody Conservatory as a winner of the prestigious Jacob K. Javits national fellowship and her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the University of South Carolina.

For more information on the First Tuesday Concert Series, interested persons can contact Roe at sroe@abac.edu.Printable News Release